Preview

What Does It Mean to Be Real?

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1558 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
What Does It Mean to Be Real?
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day… Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and stick out like a handle?” In the children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams, two toys talk within a nursery about what it means to be Real. As I listened to the reading, I realized that I can apply the discussed qualifications for Real into my life, and as I did so I began to recognize just how Real I may be. After reading the book to the class my teacher issued an assignment, a five page essay on “What does it mean to be real?” I immediately thought “With such a harsh case of senioritus? Impossible! Real? It means to walk around with air in your lungs, moveable joints and a ticking heart.” A few minutes later I woke up a bit more and evaluated the question further. It took me several weeks, many I-Pod searches, a time-consuming assessment of my life and intense movie watching, but I do believe that I have the key that will uncover Real’s meaning in every sense. What does it mean to be real? According to Webster’s Dictionary real is defined as “physically existing or not artificial”. As the great French philosopher René Descartes said “I think therefore I am”, I say “If I am then I exist and if I exist, then I am physically here”. Now establishing the fact that I am real in the physical sense, the question, “Am I artificial?” develops. This question is a tricky one with regard to the concept that teenagers do not act on our own sense of morals, but rather on the desire to satisfy those whose affection we crave, and I am no exception. Taking all this into account I am artificial, however, if this is the manner in which the rest of my contemporaries behave then I am only as real as my age. So far through my life I have operated with appendages in my eyes, with others steering my vision of reality, whether they are my parents, friends, peers or media and I realize that one element in being real is to seize control of what and how I see and understand


Cited: "Real." Merriam Webster’s Desk Dictionary. 1995. Williams, Margery. The Velveteen Rabbit. Random House Children 's Books: HCI, January 1958 Boyd, Brandon. Dig. Sony Music Entertainment: EPIC, November 2006 Hacikyan, Shaant. Teasing to Please. Fueled by Ramen: June 2006
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Alarm Matrix for Shells by Debbie Westbury
    • 510 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Alarm Matrix for Shells by Debbie Westbury

    | Metaphorically trying to show there are no boundaries when we are young innocent children. ‘infinite horizons’ ‘shells enclosing life’ juxtaposing two ideas…

    • 510 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Annie Dillard ' Living Like Weasels" Summary and Response
    • 623 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Annie Dillard ' Living Like Weasels" Summary and Response

    In the essay “Living like Weasels”, the author Annie Dillard wrote about her first encounter after she saw a real wild weasel for the first time in her life. The story began when she went to Hollins Pond which is a remarkable place of shallowness where she likes to go at sunset and sit on a tree trunk. Dillard traced the motorcycle path in all gratitude through the wild rose up in to high grassy fields and while she was looking down, a weasel caught her eyes attention; he was looking up at her too. The weasel was ten inches long, thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, and alert. His face was fierce, small, pointed as Lizard’s, and with two black eyes. They exchanged the glances as two lovers or deadly enemies. Dillard described the moment of seeing the weasel as “a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons”. But while all these ideas and thoughts were in Dillard’s mind, the weasel disappeared and Dillard felt like she was having a dream. But after one week she realized that she was not dreaming and she tried to memorize what she saw. She felt like she was in that weasel’s brain for sixty seconds and he was in her mind too. Dillard thought about the weasel’s behavior and the fact that weasels live in necessity and we live by choice, she felt that it would be interesting if she could live as weasels do and she missed her chance. She blamed herself “I should have gone for the throat. I should have lunged for the streak of white under the weasels chin and held on.” Finally, Dillard believed it would be well, proper, and obedient to grasp with your one necessity wherever it takes you as the weasels do.…

    • 623 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Response To Annie Dillard's The Active Life
    • 216 Words
    • 1 Page

    Response To Annie Dillard's The Active Life

    While I read this book or The Active Life, I agree with Palmer statement when he have believed that this reality is “deep stuff” because it is more complicated and varied than a cursory inspection may lead us to believe. With Annie Dillard, we believe we must “ride these monsters deeper down,” and there find the bedrock reality (Palmer. 30). Also, the active life book helped me to realize about the stability of my life between contemplation and action, so this book is really good, and enjoyable to me, and I could highly suggest this book to people who interested thinking about their life between action and contemplation.…

    • 216 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Bekah Jane Pogue
    • 876 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Bekah Jane Pogue

    The phrases that she uses and the words that she decided to use was superb for this piece. Pogue makes her readers think on what her underlying message is and what she means to say. For example, “And this is where I’m choosing REAL,” the detonation for real is “existing or occurring as fact; actual rather than imaginary, ideal, or fictitious.” This may be the Dictionary.com defetntion but Pogue's readers could see the word real and think something different. Some of her readers could think that the “real” way of life is the belief in God or it's the correct way to live life, especially since she choose to put real in all caps and some of the readers may feel offended because an atheist could be reading her piece. While her other readers could see this sentence as powerful and uplifting. They see it as a woman who was has been lost for many years, seeking for one thing and now since she has it, she's overjoyed and she does not want to lose it. The all caps real, just represents the faith that she has. If Pogue would have put an all lowercase real then, there would not have been depth to the sentence. The sentence would have lost the heart that it is holding. The sentence would be like any other sentence. Also, the tone in her piece is tough and rugged in the beginning because she used words like, “mistook,” “desperately,” and “grief.” But towards the end it was more lighthearted, “love,” “genuine,” “celebrates,” and “trusts.” In the beginning the words were more harsh because that is the part of of Pogue's life where she did not have faith but as time was passing by the more warm her words were becoming. And at the end when she has the faith her whole mood has changed, it went from failure to…

    • 876 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Iwt Task 1
    • 1687 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Iwt Task 1

    Realism is a very deep art form that makes a person think about what was happening at…

    • 1687 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Great Philosopher: Immanuel Kant
    • 515 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Great Philosopher: Immanuel Kant

    Things-in-themselves, or reality, are “absolutely real” (Rohlf). These are things which, according to Kant, are perceivable even if no one is perceiving them. However, how is the mind to know that a thing-in-itself exists when the mind is not, at that moment, perceiving it? The answer, for the sake of Kant’s argument, is that one cannot.…

    • 515 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Objectivism In Ayn Rand's Anthem
    • 518 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Objectivism In Ayn Rand's Anthem

    Reality, the state of things and how they exist, is shown most when the main character, Equality 7-2521, begins to question the information the Council has been teaching. We all may believe different things, but there’s in one thing that is absolutely true. It’s a fact, and although it may not match up to your beliefs, it is reality. Take for example, the electricity that was discovered. The Council didn’t believe it to be true,”they would not understand it, nor would they believe it.” (Rand, page 60), but Equality discovered it. In reality, electricity is there, it is made up of energy and it travels- it’s a fact. According to Ayn Rand, reality is what exists, it’s what is. She also believes that “reality is not to be…

    • 518 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    White Noise Substituted Reality
    • 1199 Words
    • 5 Pages

    White Noise Substituted Reality

    reality: a hyperreal…It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real”. (Simulacra and Simulations).…

    • 1199 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Immune to Reality
    • 743 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Immune to Reality

    Gilbert, Daniel. "Immune to Reality." The New Humanities Reader. By Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer. 4th ed. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, n.d. 133-50. Print.…

    • 743 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    North Korea Persuasive Essay
    • 1747 Words
    • 6 Pages

    North Korea Persuasive Essay

    to them it is a reality. This is not about some imaginary character, but about the former…

    • 1747 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Humanism In Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?
    • 2254 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Humanism In Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?

    In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the spaces between the real and the artificial, in this case colonizing humans and the colonized non-humans (also known as androids), are negotiated through the planetary colonization program, the program which sent humans to space and created androids. The real, the humans, are viewed by the fake, the androids, as aggressors, while the humans view the androids as their personal slaves. As such, there is a clear distinction between the real and the fake within the novel.…

    • 2254 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Life Is Full of Fake People and Everyone Is Not Being Real
    • 3508 Words
    • 15 Pages

    Life Is Full of Fake People and Everyone Is Not Being Real

    My classmates and I were assigned by our professor to write an essay about a certain topic entitled "Life is full of Fake People, and everyone is not being real." A lot of ideas were playing inside my head but I don’t know how to commence. I remember instantly my experience about fake friends; I can pretty much say that I grew up with a bunch of fake people. I have so many in my community and it isn't even funny. Not to mention the friends that I’ve had growing up over the years. I want to tell a tale of a so called "best friend" I had growing up.…

    • 3508 Words
    • 15 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    David Copperfield: a Novel of Hypocrisy, Sexual Degradation, Selfish
    • 1265 Words
    • 6 Pages

    David Copperfield: a Novel of Hypocrisy, Sexual Degradation, Selfish

    novel itself is so real that it has even been said to be 'more real than life' I…

    • 1265 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Use of Realia to Teach Vocabulary for Young Learners
    • 536 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Use of Realia to Teach Vocabulary for Young Learners

    The word ‘realia’, sounds a little bit too scientific for the English classroom,which across the word in textbooks, and are pondering what it means, the word realia means using real items found in the world around us to help teach English. Using realia, helps to make English lessons memorable, creating a link between the objects, and the word or phrase they show.…

    • 536 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Realia
    • 1335 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Realia

    What is it? Realia consists of actual objects or items or facsimiles thereof, which are used in the classroom to illustrate and teach vocabulary or to serve as an aid to facilitate language acquisition and production. What does it do? It concretizes vocabulary and language and places it in a frame of reference. It also allows language learners to see, hear, and in some cases touch the objects.…

    • 1335 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More

Related Topics